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Lincoln in Illinois 




THE OLD UNITED STATES COURT BUILDING IN 

SPRINGFIELD, ON THE THIRD FLOOR 

OF WHICH WAS THE OFFICE 

OF LINCOLN Gf LOGAN 







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:itr(ff'-""-''^'5^'"-^-,. 



THE LINCOLN HOUSE AT EIGHTH AND JACKSON STREETS 
SPRINGFIELD 



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LINCOLN 

IN ILLINOIS 



/ 



BY OCTAVIA ROBERTS 

'drawings by I 

LESTER G. HORNBY' 




BOSTON y NEW YORK 

HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

MDCCCC XVIII 






COPYRIGUT, I91S, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 

Published February iqjS 



Slo o 



THIS SPECIAL LARGE-PAPER EDITION IS LIMITED 
TO ONE THOUSAND COPIES 



MAR -6 1918' 

©C/.A48J937 ^ 



Foreword 



Wh 



HEN I was a little girl and lived in Spring- 
field, Illinois, I knew familiarly a large group of 
older folk, all of whom had known Lincoln. An 
uncle had stood guard over his bier, an aunt had 
sung at his funeral. Many of my grandfather's 
friends had been Lincoln's associates at the bar. 
Others had played cards with him in a certain 
old drug store that still remained. The younger 
of the older men of the town had been "Wide 
Awakes," and had marched in oilcloth capes in 
the campaign of '6 1. 

The women, too, had their recollections of 
Lincoln. They had been to his house to call 
upon his wife, to attend receptions. A certain 
old lady of charming presence had seen him 
married and, on demand, could give interesting 
details of the occasion. The oldest of them all 
had seen him pilot the Talisman down the 

V 



Foreword 

Sangamon, and remembered well that no one 
dreamed of inviting him to the ball that had 
celebrated that event. 

Springfield, one might say, was permeated 
with the spirit of Lincoln. The house where I 
went to school with other little Springfield girls 
was the house in which he had been married. 
The desk in a corridor of the chief hotel, upon 
which we did not hesitate to perch at class 
dances, had been Lincoln's. The house where 
Lincoln had lived, and where his children had 
been born, was open to the public. One took, 
country cousins to see its interior. The monu- 
ment where he slept dominated the cemetery. 
The bristling groups of bronze soldiers at the 
four comers of the shaft were of endless interest. 

The Springfield children learned to know 
Lincoln, therefore, from the stories of his neigh- 
bors and through his association with various 
places, long before they knew him from the 
histories. It was, I remember, with a feeling of 
vi 



Foreword 

surprise that I came upon his name in books. 
It was like coming upon a friend of every day 
riding in a barouche behind four horses. One 
preferred the friend and neighbor in a linen 
duster, a market-basket upon his arm. More- 
over, the histories had little to say of Spring- 
field, Lincoln's home for twenty years, — of 
Springfield, which seemed to us his proper 
backgrouad. 

It is of the everyday Lincoln and his Mid- 
Western home that I shall attempt to write, in 
the hope that the memories treasured by his 
townsmen may not be wholly without interest 
to a wider world. 

O. R. 

Boston 
November 29, 1917 



J 




THE ROAD ALONG THE SANGAMON AT NEW SALEM 

OVER WHICH LINCOLN WALKED TO 

BORROW LAW BOOKS 



Contents 



I. The Talisman 
II. New Salem 

III. Moves to Springfield . 

IV. Houses Lincoln Knew. 
V. The Lincoln Home 

VI. Old State House . 
VII. Last Days at Home . 
VIII. The Funeral . 



I 

II 
29 
45 
63 
7S 
91 
109 



J 




v-^^N'*^"^ 



STUART S" LINCOLN'S OFFICE OVER THE FURNITURE 
STORE, SPRINGFIELD 



Illustrations 



The Old United States Court Building 
IN Springfield, on the Third Floor 
OF which was the Office of Lincoln 
& Logan 

xi 



Illustrations 

The Lincoln House at Eighth and 
Jackson Streets, Springfield . Frontispiece 

The Road along the Sangamon at New 
Salem over which Lincoln walked 
to borrow Law Books . . . . ix 

Stuart & Lincoln's Office over the 
Furniture Store, Springfield . . xi 

A Country Court-House where Lincoln 
attended Court [Mount Pulaski, Logan 
County, Illinois') xiv 

On the Sangamon at New Salem . . i 

The Bend in the Sangamon at New 
Salem where the Mill stood in Lin- 
coln's Time 6 

The Tree-shaded Path, New Salem . ii 

The Little Bridge at New Salem . . 22 

The State House Dome from East Cap- 
itol Street, Springfield .... 29 

Old Buildings of Lincoln's Time on the 
Washington Street Side ok the Green 34 

Little Shops of Old Springfield . . 42 

The Robert Irwin House on Fifth Street 45 

The Owsley House 50 

xii 



Illustrations 



The Ninian Edwards House, in which 
Lincoln was married .... 54 

The Benjamin Edwards House ... 58 

The Globe Hotel 63 

A Corner of Lincoln's Sitting-Room in 
the House at Eighth and Jackson 
Streets 66 

Lincoln's Pew in the First Presbyterian 
Church 73 

The Old State House 75 

The Room in the Old State House most 
identified with lincoln . . . • 7^ 

The Station where Lincoln delivered 
HIS Farewell Address to Springfield . 91 

House of Representatives, State House, 
where Lincoln delivered his " House- 
divided-against-itself " Speech . . 94 

The Grave of Ann Rutledge, Petersburg 109 

The Lincoln Monument in Springfield . 118 




A COUNTRY COURT-HOUSE WHERE LINCOLN 

ATTENDED COURT (MOUNT PULASKI, 

LOGAN COUNTY, ILLINOIS) 



I. The 'Talisman 




ON THE SANGAMON AT NEW SALEM 



LINCOLN IN ILLINOIS 
I 

THE TALISMAN 

1 HE month is March in the year 1832. The 
scene is prairie land in the river bottom of Illi- 
nois. When the spring shall give place to sum- 
mer, the prairie will be covered with grass so 
high that the head of a man on horseback will 
be barely discernible : but to-day a man on foot 
can be seen plainly, from the crown of his 
"coon"-skin cap to the edge of his buckskin 
breeches, though cap and feet are some six feet 
four apart. 

The man who strides along the road is young 
— twenty-three years, no more. He is lean but 
wiry, a backwoodsman every inch of him. A 
man with a set purpose one watching him would 
say, as he strides on and on over the rough road 

3 



Lincoln in Illinois 

that leads to a pioneer settlement on the Illinois 
River, called Beardstown. 

Once in this town, he mixes sociably with the 
young men ; tells them that he has come from 
the settlement of New Salem, on the bluffs of 
the Sangamon, to see the landing of the Talis- 
man, a steamboat hourly expected from Cincin- 
nati on her maiden voyage into the interior of 
Illinois. To further questions he answers that 
he was born in Kentucky, " raised " in Indiana ; 
and that he has but recently come to Illinois to 
seek his fortune. 

When at last the steamer, at four miles an 
hour, creeps into Beardstown and throws out 
her gangplank amid much rejoicing, the young 
stranger is the first on board. He seeks out the 
captain, explains that he has recently made a 
voyage from New Salem to New Orleans in a 
flatboat and knows the Sangamon, the tributary 
stream up whose waters the Talisman next pro- 
poses to go, as few men can claim to know it ; 

4 



The Talisman 

and he proposes himself as pilot to guide the 
steamboat up waters that only the hopeful call 
navigable. The name he gives the captain is an 
unknown one — Abraham Lincoln. The bar- 
gain is struck. The pilot's pay for the round 
trip from Beardstown on the Illinois to Spring- 
field on the Sangamon is to be fifty dollars. 
Abraham Lincoln takes the wheel. 

On and on goes the Talisman, creeping down 
the shallow stream, picking its way among the 
obtruding snags of fallen trees, avoiding the 
shallows. If the young riverman can make this 
voyage, the promoters of the expedition believe 
that the markets of the East will be open to 
Springfield and the adjoining settlements, for 
freight no longer will have to be hauled over- 
land to St. Louis. A waterway will be estab- 
lished, between Cincinnati and Springfield, 
down a chain of rivers of which the Sangamon 
is the last. 

On and on chugs the steamboat in the bright 

5 



Lincoln in Illinois 

March weather, past groups of cheering pio- 
neers, who, lined along the river's bank, use their 
axes to good purpose to clear obstructions in 
the way of the first and only steamboat that ever 
came up the Sangamon. 

The inspirer of the expedition, one Captain 
Bogue, a mill-owner on the Sangamon, points 
out his mill as a likely landing-place ; but the 
crowd on the shore is landmark enough to the 
man at the wheel, who has dwelt during most 
of his twenty-three years in lonely places. He 
looks with interest at the group of men, women, 
and children that line the shore, shouting and 
cheering in their delight to see a steamboat come 
up the Sangamon. Many are on horseback, but 
some — and the youth notes it with interest pro- 
found — are "flourishing in carriages." One 
equipage has a lemon-yellow body, black leather 
top, and steps covered with carpet that can be 
lowered for a lady's descent. Young Lincoln 
had not seen the like before. 
6 







THE BEND IN THE SANGAMON AT NEW SALEM WHERE 
THE MILL STOOD IN LINCOLN'S TIME 



I 



The Talisman 

The landing safely accomplished, the pas- 
sengers, the captain, and the crew ride into town, 
to Springfield, two miles inland, over roads that 
test endurance. There they receive a royal wel- 
come that finds expression in a public ball and 
private hospitality. Everywhere the occasion is 
celebrated with toasts and with song. Down 
the long years the voices float to us from the 
muddy, straggling street of the town and from 
the warm interior of the tavern,** Indian Queen." 
Some local rhymester has set new words to an 
old tune, and they take the public fancy and 
are lustily sung during the week in which the 
Talisman remains : — 

" Oh, Captain Bogue, he gave the load, 

And Captain Bogue he showed the road, 
And he came up with a right good will 
And tied his boat up to his mill. 

" Now we are up the Sangamaw 

And sure will have a grand hurrah. 
So fill your glasses to the brim 

With whiskey, brandy, wine, and gin. 

7 



Lincoln in Illinois 

" Illinois suckers, young and raw, 

Were strung along the Sangamaw, 
To see the boat come up the stream. 
They surely thought it was a dream." 

But in one breast the song's invitation to fill 
the glass meets with no response ; for the pilot, 
"A. Lincoln," as he signs himself, does not 
drink. He finds stimulation in other things, 
above all in talk, for which he often must have 
been hungry. He mixes with the men, swaps 
yarns, of which he has picked up an amazing 
store, widens his acquaintance materially ; meets 
among others a stripling called « Bill " Herndon. 

The rustic Lohengrin has no premonition 
that Springfield is to be his future home, that 
young Herndon is to be his law partner and 
biographer. For him the present doubtless is 
all-sufiicient. He has earned fifty dollars. He 
is young, strong, and lithe. No man in his set- 
tlement is his physical equal. Life opens before 
him. He joins in the nonsense with the rest : — 



The Talisman 

" Illinois suckers, young and raw, 

Were strung along the Sangamaw, 
To see the boat come up the stream. 
They surely thought it was a dream." 

The song reminds him of a story. The crowd 
guffaws. It likes his mimicry and his humor. 
"Who is that long-legged fellow, anyway?" 
some one asks. The answer is : '* A storekeeper 
from New Salem. He 's just come out for the 
Legislature." 



II. New Salem 










THE TREE-SHADED PATH, NEW SALEM 



II 

NEW SALEM 

IN the autumn of the year that had seen the 
Talisman come up the Sangamon, the young 
pilot of that expedition met political defeat. 
And, as he himself once said long afterwards 
in a campaign document, it was the only time 
he was ever beaten by the people. 

Probably he found what consolation he could 
in the reflection that during the long summer, 
when the other candidates were free to cam- 
paign in their own interests, he was far away 
from his county, serving as captain of militia in 
a scrimmage dubbed the Black Hawk War. 

In one of his few public utterances before 
his military duties took him from Sangamon, he 
had said: *«I am young and unknown; I was 
born and have ever remained in the most humble 
walk of life. . . . If the good people in their wis- 

13 



Lincoln in Illinois 

dom shall see fit to keep me in the background, 
I have been too familiar with disappointments 
to be very much chagrined." 

It was probably in the spirit of these words 
that Lincoln returned to New Salem and re- 
sumed his occupation of storekeeper, buying 
out one of the other merchants and entering 
into a partnership with a man named Berry. If 
he had been successful in this venture, he might 
have remained a country merchant, respected 
by his customers as a genial, honest man. 

But Fortune had her eye on this young pi- 
oneer, with his quick wit, his analytical mind, 
his dogged perseverance. In spite of many dis- 
appointments shehad let him suffer in his twenty- 
six years, she had no notion of forever " keeping 
him in the background." A copy of Blackstone 
in a barrel of rubbish was enough for her pur- 
poses. Young Lincoln came upon it there, 
turned the pages, cocked his feet above his head 
and began to read. 

14 



New Salem 

Occasionally a customer dropped in, inter- 
rupting the reading and breaking the dreams 
that sprang from the perusal of those tattered 
old pages. When the customer left with his pur- 
chases of cotton chain and brown calico under 
his arm, the dreams sprang again into being, re- 
solving themselves into a persistent question: 
" Could a man with scant education, no money, 
in debt, aspire to become a lawyer?" 

" I was born and have ever remained in the 
most humble walk of life," the dreamer had said 
to the voters. He had but to drop his eyes to his 
toil-worn hands to know how true were his words. 
With those hands he could pitch more hay than 
any man in the vicinity. He could lift heavier 
burdens. His calloused palms and his great 
strength seemed to say that manual labor was 
his natural desdny. At this point he would put 
on his hat and go down the one litde street of 
New Salem in search of his friend, Jonathan 
Miller, the blacksmith, to discuss with him the 

15 



Lincoln in Illinois 

relative advantages of blacksmithing and the 
law. 

While they two sit before the forge, debat- 
ing the momentous question, let us look down 
the straggling street of cabins and make the 
acquaintance of some of the good men and 
women who were the early friends and neigh- 
bors of young Abraham Lincoln. 

In the last cabin of the line, a double log 
house, we find Jack Kelso and his wife. Lover 
of the woods and streams is Kelso. He knows 
the spots where the black perch bite best, the 
trees where honey is stored. He can sit all day 
with his fishing-rod in hand and quote Burns 
and Shakespeare. Lincoln learns these poets 
from his lips. 

To the right, near the Springfield road, the 
good doctor lives. A stern believer in temper- 
ance is Dr. Allen, an earnest religious zealot in a 
community that had none too much of religion. 
Near Dr. Allen lives Alexander Ferguson, the 
i6 



New Salem 

shoemaker ; Martin Waddle, the village hatter ; 
Henry Onstot, the cooper. A stone's-throw 
away stands the two-story log cabin where Lin- 
coln boards and lodges. 

The landlord, James Rutledge, and his wife 
and many children treat Lincoln more like a 
member of the family than a boarder. One of 
the daughters, Anne May, is destined to be im- 
mortalized in song and story as the beloved of 
Abraham Lincoln. 

A graceful young figure she makes, in her 
homespun dress and moccasins, moving to and 
fro in the dim interior of the log house or bend- 
ing over the open fire baking the cornbread for 
the tavern's guests. She had auburn hair and 
blue eyes and a sweet, fresh young voice. Often 
Lincoln and the other young men must have 
heard her singing at her work. 

On the bank below New Salem, near where 
the mill grinds the grain, the schoolmaster. Men- 
tor Graham, lives. He is destined to lend a help- 

17 



Lincoln in Illinois 

ing hand to ambition. Under his charge, Lincoln 
studies Kirkham's Grammar, learns how to frame 
sentences — knowledge that shall one day bear 
fruit in a Gettysburg address. 

A mile down the river dwells another good 
friend. Boiling Green, the squire, great of girth 
and great of heart. His buckskin latchstring is 
always ready to Lincoln's hand ; a place awaits 
him at the hospitable board. 

Two years pass, in which Abraham Lincoln 
slowly makes his way. In his twenty-fourth 
year he is appointed postmaster and thereafter 
he distributes New Salem's mail twice a week. 
He is dressed usually in flax and tow-linen panta- 
loons " about five inches too short in the legs," 
upheld, frequently, by one suspender. A cal- 
ico shirt, coarse brogans, and blue yarn socks 
complete his costume. 

The salary of the postmaster is as much too 
short for his needs as the tow and flax panta- 



New Salem 

loons for his long legs. He therefore welcomes 
a chance which presents itself to assist the county 
surveyor, John Calhoun. The pay promised the 
assistant, if he can master the principles of sur- 
veying, seems colossal — three dollars a day, 
the price of three weeks' board or of an acre 
and a half of rich land I 

In his need of instruction, Lincoln well knows 
where to turn. He takes his problem to that 
good Yankee school-teacher. Mentor Graham, 
who had helped him master Kirkham's Gram- 
mar. The pupil and the teacher for weeks bend 
over the books far into the night. The only time 
they look up from the work is when Mrs. Gra- 
ham reminds them that the wood is running 
low. 

In the mean time Lincoln & Berry's general 
store has been rapidly sinking to extinction. Its 
collapse leaves Lincoln stranded in debt, the 
obligation of which he is doomed to bear alone, 
as Berry, his worthless partner, dies soon after 

19 



Lincoln in Illinois 

the failure. And the burden is added to, in the 
beginning at least, by the necessities of the new 
position ; for to be a deputy surveyor — although 
the new profession will yield three dollars a day 
— will entail fresh expense: a horse will have 
to be bought, instruments will have to be pur- 
chased ; and, as yet, Lincoln can pay for these 
things only in promises. 

His promises seem to be good, however. 
He obtains the necessary equipment, and from 
this time on works under Calhoun, enjoying, we 
can safely guess, the society of the man as much 
as he did the work in his new profession. For 
Calhoun, like Mentor Graham, is a person of 
some culture. He has studied law, taught school, 
and is quick and able in debate. Long years 
after, when Abraham Lincoln was measuring 
wits with Stephen A. Douglas, — the idol of Il- 
linois, — he told a friend that he was less afraid 
of debating with Douglas than he was of doing 
so with the comparatively unknown John Cal- 
20 



New Salem 

houn. " For Douglas will equivocate and Cal- 
houn will not," he explained. And one of the 
pictures New Salem yields to us is Lincoln with 
Calhoun, this man who would not deceive, at 
work, together. Boundaries were safe in the care 
of these two. 

But New Salem is so rich in pictures of that 
early, formative period of Lincoln's lifethat,turn 
our eyes as we may, we are rewarded by some 
new vision of him. Even the roads have their 
memories. On the highway between New Sa- 
lem and Springfield how often he could be seen 
trudging to and fro on the long walk to the larger 
settlement. After the purchase of his horse, he 
could cover the miles more swiftly. It was when 
he was mounted that he overtook a stranger on 
a much-jaded horse about fourteen miles from 
Springfield. They fell into conversation and 
Lincoln learned that the stranger was hastening 
to the Land Office in Springfield to enter his 
land before a false friend, who was close behind, 

21 



Lincoln in Illinois 

could put in a prior claim. In a moment Lincoln 
was off his horse and had exchanged with the 
chance acquaintance, who, with a fresh mount, 
rode off joyfully, to succeed in his errand. This 
oft-quoted story must in justice be said to il- 
lustrate the general good-will between men in 
sparsely settled regions quite as much as it does 
the kindly, quick sympathy that beat under a 
certain homespun shirt. 

Another New Salem road, not definitely iden- 
tified, gives us an amusing picture of young 
Lincoln, illustrative of other traits. This time he 
is on a pleasure party. A company of young vil- 
lage people ride together, each girl boasting an 
eager, attentive escort. A Miss Owen, a visitor 
from Kentucky, had fallen to Lincoln's share. 
When the party were forced to cross a certain 
branch of the river, the young men embraced the 
opportunity to assist the girls in every possible 
way. Lincoln alone offered no such gallantry. 
The visiting Miss Owen, much incensed, said to 

22 




... , ^slk 



THE LITTLE BRIDGE AT NEW SALEM 



New Salem 

him, when he joined her after her scrabble over 
the branch, "You are a nice fellow. I suppose 
you did not care whether my neck was broken 
or not." " I knew you were plenty smart," said 
Lincoln honestly, " to take care of yourself" 

He paid women in general the compliment of 
" being plenty smart to look after themselves " ; 
for in a letter published in the Sangamon "Jour- 
nal " in I 8 3 6, he stated boldly that he believed 
in admitting all whites to the " right of suffrage 
who pay taxes or bear arms ("by no means ex- 
cluding females^." He was at the time of this 
utterance already a legislator, having in a second 
attempt won that distinction. The rise in the 
world entailed, as each upward step had always 
entailed for him, yet more debt. He was forced 
to borrow two hundred dollars in order to travel 
decently by coach, dressed in proper attire,to the 
scene of his new labors. 

On his return to New Salem from the State 
capital, Vandalia, he was greeted as a coming 

23 



Lincoln in Illinois 

man — he who had climbed up that steep river- 
bank such a short while since, an unknown la- 
borer on a flatboat. There was no more talk now 
of being a blacksmith. Toil there was to be for 
him in plenty, but never again was he to earn his 
bread with his hands. Eighteen years later he was 
telling the people : <« There is no permanent class 
of hired labor among us. Twenty-five years ago, 
I was a hired laborer. . . . Free labor has the in- 
spiration of hope." 

Perhaps it is because Lincoln's story is over- 
full of discouragements and hardships that the 
biographers have lingered over a few months of 
happiness that Fate at last gave to him. He had 
long known Anne Rutledge, the young daugh- 
ter of the tavern-keeper. He had known her as 
one knows a sister in the intimacy of family life. 
He had known her as a young girl sought by 
other men. One of them, a hard-headed young 
business man named McNamar, " with no more 
poetry than the multiplication table," had won 
24 



New Salem 

her promise to be his wife. It was this same man 
to whom Lincoln had once turned to correct the 
most glaring flaws in an early political speech. 
McNamar had left New Salem promising to 
write and to return soon. Time had gone on and 
he had not kept either promise. We can well im- 
agine that the tender heart of the young post- 
master must have ached for the girl when the 
weekly mails came in without the letters for 
which she waited in vain. From comforter he 
must have drifted insensibly to lover. In time his 
love was returned. Tradition gives us many a 
picture of the two: Anne at the quiking frame, 
Anne at the spinning wheel, Anne sweetly sing- 
ing hymns, Lincoln ever near. Sometimes, by 
the light of the fire, they would bend over the 
precious Kirkham's Grammar. One night Lin- 
coln wrote on the tide-page in his clear hand, 
«« Anne M. Rutledge is now learning grammar." 
The old book is still treasured by Anne's family, 
the name on the tide-page still legible. 
25 



Lincoln in Illinois 

The heat of the prairies can be pitiless. In the 
year 1835 the rain fell unceasingly, without 
cooling the air. Heat and rain were followed by 
a steam that seemed to exude from the earth's 
pores. The pioneers in the river bottoms shook 
and burned alternately with " fever and ague." 
In New Salem good Dr. Allen went from cabin 
to cabin ministering to the sick. Among those he 
could not save was young Anne Rutledge. One 
hot August day her neighbors laid her to rest in 
the pine coffin some one of the pioneers had 
fashioned. 

It was Lincoln's first great grief Dr. Allen 
found him broken with sorrow, shaking with 
chills and fever, and sent him to the good squire, 
Boiling Green, under whose hospitable roof he 
was nursed back to health. 

The euphonious name, over whose syllables 
Lincoln's pen must have lingered lovingly when 
he wrote it in the old grammar, is all that is en- 
graved on the boulder that marks the young 
26 



New Salem 

girl's grave. Near by a birch tree is growing. To 
the pilgrim, as he glances back over his shoulder 
at the quiet spot, the birch, white and slender, is 
no unfitting reminder of the bride who was never 
to be. 

Over eighty momentous years have passed 
since that sultry August. New Salem has long 
since vanished from the earth. The traveler who 
climbs the clay bank of the Sangamon in search 
of the lost town, finds nothing more, upon reach- 
ing the summit, than a deserted field, half wood- 
land, half pasture. Of the cabins nothing is left 
but a few depressions among the briers. Down 
the street, where Kelso used to come whistling 
home with his catch of fish, a drove of horses 
crop the long grass. The silence is deep, broken 
only by the call of a blue jay. 

And yet to the lover of Lincoln this forsaken 
field speaks of him now and always ; for here, in 
the span of these few acres, he passed the form- 
27 



Lincoln in Illinois 

ative years of his life. Here he found friends 
who helped him start on his long upward way, 
giving him work, lending him books and money, 
endorsing him for postmaster, sending him to the 
Legislature, and encouraging him by their almost 
unanimous vote. Well may the horses stray down 
the lost village street. Well may the jay build her 
nest in the crotch of the tree where Lincoln's 
store once stood. New Salem's work was done I 



III. Moves to Springfield 




"i?>. 



THE STATE HOUSE DOME FROM EAST CAPITOL 
STREET, SPRINGFIELD 



I 



Ill 

MOVES TO SPRINGFIELD 

When New Salem helped to send Abraham 
Lincoln to the State Legislature, the sessions were 
held in Vandalia, a town on the western border- 
line of Illinois. It was generally agreed that a 
more central location for the capital was desir- 
able ; whereupon a bitter contest began for that 
honor, between a circle of prairie towns. That 
Springfield was chosen was due largely to Abra- 
ham Lincoln and eight of his colleagues, nick- 
named for their stature " The Long Nine." 

It was natural that Lincoln should favor 
Springfield. It was situated conveniently near 
New Salem. It was the home of an ever-increas- 
ing group of new-made but valuable friends. 
Major Stuart, a lawyer of Kentucky birth, had 
been especially kind, lending his young friend 
law books and encouraging his ambition to enter 

31 



Lincoln in Illinois 

the bar. William Butler, a Springfield citizen, 
was another new friend. Simeon Francis, the ed- 
itor of the leading Whig newspaper, had shown 
more than a passing interest when, self-intro- 
duced, Lincoln had walked from New Salem 
to present himself in the editorial office. These 
men and others were all using their utmost in- 
fluence to make Springfield the capital, so that 
by joining in their campaign, Lincoln was not 
only serving his own ends, but helping his good 
friends as well. 

In the year 1836, when Lincoln was in the 
twenty-seventh year of his age and his second 
term in the Legislature, Springfield won the vic- 
tory and became the permanent capital of Il- 
linois. It is easy to imagine the welcome which 
awaited the men who were responsible for the 
town's good fortune. As an entertainment, not 
even the ball that was given in honor of the ar- 
rival of the Talisman had surpassed the banquet 
now given «• The Long Nine." The pilot Lincoln, 
32 



Moves to Springfield 

in his buckskin breeches, so shrunken that they 
did not meet his socks by several inches, had not 
been invited to the ball ; but m the four years 
that had intervened since that day, Lincoln the 
legislator, in his «< mixed jeans coat, clawhammer 
style, flax and tow-linen pantaloons and pot- 
metal boots," had been making his way upward 
in the world. Consequently there was no more 
honored guest at the banquet at the Rural Hotel 
than the young legislator, «« A. Lincoln, mem- 
ber from Sangamon." 

It was not long after this public rejoicing that 
Lincoln, his entire possessions in his saddlebag, 
came to Springfield to live. A few months pre- 
vious he had been admitted to the bar, so that 
a change of residence was a necessity, as New 
Salem, flickering to its end, ofi'ered no future to 
ambition. 

The Springfield that awaited Lincoln in * 3 7 
was a country town boasting less than two thou- 
sand inhabitants. It was built, in good Western 

33 



Lincoln in Illinois 

fashion, about an open square, its mathematical 
center. This square was destined to hold the 
future State House. The streets of the town were 
laid out about the square with the accuracy of 
a checkerboard. They were unpaved, and in 
bad weather wagons sunk to their hubs in the 
black, sticky mire. Sometimes as many as a 
dozen overshoes were left sticking in the mud 
to show where ladies had attempted to pick their 
way over the crossings. 

When the mud would permit, the young peo- 
ple of the town used to form in a procession 
nightly, every girl's arm tucked securely in that 
of a " beau," and thus mated, walk in the twi- 
light down the cow paths. The men so out- 
numbered the girls that very small maidens were 
sometimes pressed into service. Later, when the 
twilight died, girls would place lighted candles 
in their windows as signals that they were at 
home to such of the beaux as cared to seek their 
society. 

34 




OLD BUILDINGS OF LINCOLN'S TIME ON THE WASHINGTON 
STREET SIDE OF THE GREEN 



Moves to Springfield 

Around the central green of the town, a row 
of two-story buildings straggled. On the lower 
floors of these, the merchants and bankers trans- 
acted business. The lofts were used for family 
residences or for the offices of the professional 
men. In one of these upper rooms Lincoln com- 
menced the practice of law as the junior part- 
ner of Major Stuart. In still another he found 
lodging with Joshua Speed, a young merchant 
of the town. 

On the day Lincoln was admitted to the bar, 
he went to Speed's store of general merchandise 
to ask for sufficient credit to buy a bed and its 
furnishings. 

«• If my experiment as a lawyer is a success," 
he said, '< I will pay you by Christmas. If I fail, 
I do not know that I can ever pay you." 

Joshua Speed had but a slight acquaintance 
with this sad-faced, honest customer; but he 
knew of him favorably by hearsay as a «« won- 
derful character" who could "outwrestle any 

35 



Lincoln in Illinois 

man in the county " and who could " beat any 
lawyer in Springfield speaking." 

Speed spoke impulsively, with generous 
ardor. 

« I have a large room upstairs," he said, 
*< with a double bed which you are welcome to 
share with me." And this, as a contemporary 
explained, «« because Speed was a Kentucky gen- 
tleman." 

Lincoln returned that courtesy of " the Ken- 
tucky gentleman " with a lifelong devotion. To 
Speed and to Speed only he confided his inner- 
most feelings. In the letters that have come down 
to us, those to Speed are the only ones in which 
we find record of Lincoln's private life. To Speed 
he wrote of the troubled course of his betrothal 
to that woman who afterwards became his wife ; 
after his marriage it was to Speed he wrote of 
his children. Not even the strain of opposite po- 
litical beliefs as to the burning question of the 
extension of slavery could shake their friendship. 

36 



Moves to Springfield 

Lincoln could always sign himself, «« I am your 
friend forever." When he was President and 
uneasy over Kentucky's loyalty to the Union, it 
was to that tried and true old friend he turned. 
Again and again Speed was summoned to Wash- 
ington. He had as much to do as any man with 
keeping Kentucky from secession. And for his 
services Speed asked nothing for himself He 
continued to live out his days in Kentucky as an 
unassuming business man, " fond of flowers," 
they say, and "with a vein of sentiment." 

But these days are all to come. Speed and 
Lincoln we are looking upon in their youth, 
lodging together like brothers over Speed's gen- 
eral store. In the evening they keep open house 
in the store itself Here around the open fire 
in the rear all the young men of the town were 
prone to drop in to enjoy vigorous debates upon 
the live subjects of their day. 

Our picture of this group would not be com- 
plete if we did not single out for particular 

37 



Lincoln in Illinois 

mention a young man, several years Lincoln's 
junior, as short as Lincoln is tall, a young man 
equally ambitious, with piercing blue eyes, a 
wealth of thick curling hair and a leonine car- 
riage of the head. He has been a fellow legis- 
lator with Lincoln in the Vandalia days, though 
as strong a Democrat as Lincoln was a Whig. 
At present he holds the position of Register of 
the Land Office. His name is Stephen A. Doug- 
las. We shall hear of him again. 

These young men of Springfield, around 
Speed's fire, are the whetstones upon which 
two of the group are unconsciously sharpening 
the mental weapons they shall draw against each 
other in days that are still to come. An evening 
of these debates would leave Speed and Lincoln 
still glowing, as, after covering the embers of 
the fire, they made their way to their cold bed 
in the loft above. 

Later the two friends exchanged these crude 
quarters for a comfortable room in the private 
38 



Moves to Springfield 

house of William Butler, a prominent citizen 
of the town, and Lincoln lived on here after 
Speed had given up his store and returned to 
his Kentucky home. The children of the But- 
ler family remembered him as a delightful friend, 
always willing to toss boys and girls high up in 
the air in his sinewy young arms. When the 
oldest of them came down to breakfast in the 
morning Lincoln was usually to be found, warm- 
ing himself before the comfortable glow of a 
Franklin stove, engrossed in the works of Wil- 
liam Wirt. It was out of compliment to this in- 
terest that one of the Butler children was named 
after the famous jurist. Another boy was named 
Speed. The two perpetuated the memory of 
the friendship of the two young men sheltered 
under this hospitable roof 

It was before this time, in the very early days 
after Lincoln's removal to Springfield, that he 
wrote to Mary Owen, that young woman whom 
he had failed to help over the branch at New 

39 



Lincoln in Illinois 

Salem : " This living in Springfield is a dull busi- 
ness after all, at least it is to me. I am quite as 
lonesome here as I ever was in my life. I have 
been spoken to by but one woman since I have 
been here, and should not have been by her if 
she could have avoided it. I have never been to 
church yet and probably shall not be soon. I 
stay away because I am conscious I should not 
know how to behave." 

Lincoln's social deportment, never his strong 
point, it must be admitted, was at this early day 
sadly deficient. Poor, awkward, badly dressed, 
without the graces that appeal to women, no 
candle flickered its evening welcome to him. 

It was either just before or just after he came 
to Springfield to live that Lincoln went to an 
evening party at Simeon Francis's, the social 
polish, of which he fek the lack, still unmas- 
tered. Editor Francis lived on the northern out- 
skirts of the town in a comfortable house which 
stood in a spacious lot that boasted a flower 
40 



Moves to Springfield 

garden. In central Illinois, with its summers of 
scorching heat, gardens are not now common. 
In that early day the shrubs and flowers of the 
editor's garden were a matter of local wonder 
and pride. We can picture young Lincoln, 
therefore, on the night of Simeon Francis's party 
approaching this somewhat imposing place with 
feelings of mingled interest and timidity. 

He pushes open the garden gate, and walks 
up the path to the door between the shrubs and 
flowers. A friend of Editor Francis answers for 
the remainder of the story. The door opens, 
Lincoln bows his head and enters. He hears 
laughter from within, the deep voices of men, 
the lighter voices of women. He catches sight 
of curls and ribbons, hears the swish of silk. 
Divining the countryman's embarrassment, Ed- 
itor Francis hastens forward. His kind glance 
lights on Lincoln's face with its habitual expres- 
sion of melancholy, then on his hat which still 
securely rests on his head. The editor smiles, 
41 



Lincoln in Illinois 

and holds out his hand for this offending arti- 
cle. Lincoln smiles, too, and the smile lights up 
his plain face until it glows with warmth and 
life, as he places his hand in that of his host with 
a clasp firm and cordial, his hat still resting on 
his dark hair I So he makes his debut into Spring- 
field society. 

The Springfield which Lincoln knew has 
disappeared almost as completely as the New 
Salem which he left behind him. In Spring- 
field, now grown into a city of fifty thousand 
inhabitants, progress has been as destructive as 
nature. The building in whose second story 
Stuart & Lincoln had their offices, and that other 
where Joshua Speed and Lincoln sat before the 
open fire of the store, are no longer in existence. 
The house of William Butler, where Lincoln 
lived after Speed had returned to Kentucky, has 
also gone its way. The house of Simeon Fran- 
cis, with its shrubs and roses, has given place 
42 




Hh\, 






LITTLE SHOPS OF OLD SPRINGFIELD 



Moves to Springfield 

to a theater which claims that corner of the town. 
We may wander around the square, now neatly 
paved with brick, and, save for the old State 
House, look in vain for any of the landmarks 
that were in Lincoln's time. It is true, they say, 
that here and there the walls of some of the old 
buildings still stand, but in the Western passion 
to be abreast of the time fronts have been torn 
away and replaced twice and thrice. Glittering 
plate-glass windows, new doors, added stories, 
have so changed the appearance of the streets 
that Lincoln knew, that he himself might well 
feel lost should his astral form visit these scenes. 



IV. Houses Lincoln Knew 







^'Itf^ 



THE ROBERT IRWIN HOUSE ON FIFTH STREET 



IV 

HOUSES LINCOLN KNEW 
In the residential portion of old Springfield, 
time has been a shade less cruel to the land- 
marks of Lincoln's day. Here and there we 
come upon houses which once knew his step, 
houses that opened their doors to him in friendly 
greeting through many years. This one, with 
the long steps and wide veranda mounted on its 
high English basement, was the homestead of 
Robert Irwin, a merry wag of a man who liked 
a good game of chess before the fire, who led 
the campaign singing for Lincoln in '6 1 , mak- 
ing wry faces to amuse the crowd. He and 
Lincoln had many a chess game, many a laugh 
together. 

Major Stuart's house, with its long veranda, 
its spacious rooms, has known little change. 
Stuart's friendship with Lincoln started long be- 
47 



Lincoln in Illinois 

fore they became law partners. The two men 
served together in the skirmish known as the 
" Black Hawk War " and sat in the Lower House 
at Vandalia as fellow legislators. Nine years 
Lincoln's senior, Major Stuart long outlived 
his friend. A distinguished Congressman, a pol- 
ished gentleman of the old school, we see him 
yet, in fancy, walking the streets that Lincoln 
knew, with a courtly bow for high and low. He 
once said to a friend with some sadness : "I be- 
lieve that I am going to live to posterity only 
as the man who advised Mr. Lincoln to study 
law and lent him law books. It is a little humili- 
ating that a man who has served his country 
in Congress, as well as his State, should have no 
further claim to remembrance; but I believe this 
is so." 

The law firm of Stuart & Lincoln was not of 

long duration. When Stuart went to Congress 

in 1 841, Judge Stephen T. Logan, the man 

who was accounted the best lawyer at the Illinois 

48 



Houses Lincoln Knew 

bar, offered a partnership to Lincoln. Judge Lo- 
gan ««was small in stature, frail in constitution, 
with a piercing, deep-set eye." He taught Lin- 
coln much law in the two years that they worked 
side by side. The house in which Judge Logan 
lived still stands in its ample grounds. An old 
lady, who was a child in Lincoln's day, remem- 
bered that while she was playing there with the 
Logan children Lincoln called to see the Judge. 
When he was told that the Judge was out, but 
would soon be in, he sank provisionally into a 
rocking-chair so much too small for him that his 
long legs were thrust out in a manner that made 
the children laugh. From this seat he watched 
their game of marbles for a moment or two, then 
asked for a taw and dropped on the floor among 
them. Here he was found by the Judge and his 
wife, and thus the old lady who told the story 
best remembered him. She used to conclude 
her reminiscence with a quizzical smile and 
touch of amusement : " Now, of course, people 

49 



Lincoln in Illinois 

think of Lincoln as a great man, as great, I dare 
say, as Lord Palmerston ! " 

At one time almost every house in Spring- 
field could boast of as intimate a remembrance; 
but one by one these old houses have made way 
for newer buildings. At this writing few that 
knew Lincoln's step still stand. One that Spring- 
field knows to-day as the residence of the late 
Bishop Seymour was in Lincoln's time the house 
of John Owsley. Its classic white pillars, rising 
from the ground to the roof, reminded the pass- 
er-by that its owner, who was a Kentuckian, had 
tried as far as possible to make this new home re- 
semble the Southern mansion he had left behind 
him. Lincoln was often a guest within these 
doors, though in his own Kentucky days such 
mansions as this had been all unknown to him. 
At a wedding that occurred here, Mr. Owsley's 
young daughter was put in charge of two lively 
twin brothers. Just as the ceremony was about 
to begin, she missed them and searched for them 

50 




THE OWSLEY HOUSE 



Houses Lincoln Knew 

in vain until she spied their gleeful faces high 
above the crowd. And then she saw that her 
charges were perched on Lincoln's shoulders, 
from which vantage-point they enjoyed the cere- 
mony. 

The house that is richest in reminiscences of 
Lincoln stands next door to the Owsley home. 
It is an old brick mansion of mid-Victorian ar- 
chitecture which, when Lincoln came to Spring- 
field, was one of the finest residences in the 
State. Already its days are numbered, but before 
it goes down before the pitiless demands of an 
expanding community, we may pause for its 
story, for the vision of the days when, with its 
conservatory, its rosewood and mahogany fur- 
niture, covered with haircloth or brocatelle, its 
gold-banded china and solid silver, its splendor 
was the pride of the countryside. 

The owner of this house was Ninian Ed- 
wards, son of an early Governor of the new State 
of Illinois, and himself a politician of note. He 
51 



Lincoln in Illinois 

had been a member of the Legislature several 
times and had borne an active part in the cam- 
paign to remove the capital to Springfield. 
Whether it was through association with Ed- 
wards in the Legislature, or through the kind 
offices of Speed that Lincoln first found his way 
to the hospitable Edwards home, is not known. 
It is more than likely that he made his first ap- 
pearance there as a guest at one of the semi- 
annual receptions which Mrs. Edwards made 
a point of holding for the Legislature. 

This lady, a Todd of Kentucky, was famous 
for her entertainments. Whether one was asked 
to the ball or the " promenade," the cheer was 
equally good. Fifty years after, when these par- 
ties were merely a memory, the hostess's sal- 
ads were mentioned with respect ; and the occa- 
sions when they were served were recalled with 
pride. That rural legislator who approached his 
hostess with, " I am obliged to leave on the nine 
o'clock train and would be pleased to have you 
52 



Houses Lincoln Knew 

give me my supper early," crudely epitomized 
the general appreciation. 

The attraction for Lincoln in the year '39, 
however, was neither the ball, the promenade, 
nor the cheer. His visits were plainly inspired 
by Mrs. Edwards's sister, Mary Todd, of Ken- 
tucky, a girl who had fled a stepmother to accept 
the shelter of a sister's home. She was a bright- 
eyed, well-educated girl with the reputation of 
a sharp tongue in a day when, as a contempo- 
rary explained, " a retort was well thought of" 
An old lady remembered vividly the evening 
party at which Mary Todd first appeared in 
Springfield in a dashing costume of white bob- 
binet with black velvet sash and tie. She used to 
smile slyly over the memory of some retort Mary 
Todd had made that very night to a young man 
who essayed a battle of wits with her. The party 
had been peculiarly marked for the old lady, — 
who was then a very young lady, — not only by 
Miss Todd's brilliant entry, but by the fact that 

53 



Lincoln in Illinois 

upon this evening the first pyramid cake ap- 
peared. 

What miraculous confections they were, 
those pyramid cakes of Mary Todd's and Lin- 
coln's youth. Cakes of graduated size, placed 
one on top of another like children's blocks, 
composed the glistening whole. Four and five 
stories high they rose in frosted splendor in the 
centers of long tables. Thirty-six eggs could be 
used in their making. A morning was none too 
long for a child to wield a fly-brush while the 
icing dried. 

The old lady who remembered the simulta- 
neous appearance of Mary Todd and the pyra- 
mid cake could not recollect that Lincoln had 
been present at that first party. Stephen A. 
Douglas, one of the rising politicians of the State, 
was more likely to have been there. The third 
and last of Lincoln's future law partners, young 
William Herndon, may well have been among 
the guests. He tells, in his famous " Life of 
54 




THE NINIAN EDWARDS HOUSE, IN WHICH LINCOLN 
WAS MARRIED 



Houses Lincoln Knew 

Lincoln," of dancing with Mary Todd upon 
another evening soon after and of unwittingly 
calling forth one of her sharp retorts. He was 
as a man and also as a writer much given to 
flowery language, with figures not always well 
chosen. In would-be gallantry he said to Miss 
Todd : " You glide through the dance with the 
ease of a serpent." With a flashing eye and a 
stern •« An unfortunate comparison truly," Mary 
Todd stopped short. 

This well may have been the beginning of a 
long misunderstanding between Lincoln's fu- 
ture wife and Lincoln's future law partner. Cer- 
tain it is that they did not like each other and 
that Mary Todd has suffered grievously in 
Herndon's hands. 

Apparently Lincoln gave no such offense. 
His visits were encouraged, even in those days 
when Stephen A. Douglas joined Miss Todd's 
train, paying her what the world of that day 
called " particular court." Both Lincoln and 



Lincoln in Illinois 

Douglas, in that rivalry which ran through their 
lives, had their turn sitting on the mahogany 
divans, upholstered in patterned haircloth, un- 
der the light of Mrs. Edwards's sperm-oil lamps. 
At the end of the year Lincoln was the victor, 
his engagement to Miss Todd being generally 
understood. 

But the old house that had seen Lincoln's 
love-making and Douglas's " court," was to see 
also a girl's tears. The engagement did not run 
smoothly. A year and more of estrangement 
ensued during which Lincoln's step was not 
heard on the threshold nor his place claimed at 
Mrs. Edwards's hospitable board. More grace- 
ful figures than his sat beside Miss Todd on the 
slippery surfaces of the horsehair sofas. 

The year of estrangement was perhaps the 
most wretched of Lincoln's life. Racked with 
doubts as to his own feelings, he seems to have 
been further distressed by his anxiety as to what 
Mary Todd might be suffering. He wrote out 
56 



Houses Lincoln Knew 

his heart to Speed, and at one time went to 
Kentucky to pay him a visit. How it might all 
have ended we cannot guess, had it not been for 
the intrepidity of Mrs. Simeon Francis, the wife 
of the editor, who had long been Lincoln's 
friend. Perhaps she was the girl's confidante 
and knew her to be constant to Lincoln. Per- 
haps she had grown weary of the young legis- 
lator's woe-begone countenance. In any event, 
she boldly took fate in her own hands. She gave 
an evening party with the express purpose of 
bringing the estranged pair together. When 
they met, awkwardly enough, embarrassed to 
find themselves in each other's presence so un- 
expectedly, Mrs. Francis briskly crossed their 
hands, with " Be friends again,'* and left them 
to work out their own salvation. 

Those hands were destined never again to be 
unlocked. In the weeks that followed, they used 
to meet in Mrs. Francis's pleasant rooms, safe 
here from comment and observation. One rainy 

57 



Lincoln in Illinois 

morning — the 4th of November of that same 
year — Ninian Edwards appeared breathlessly 
at the house of his brother, Benjamin Edwards, 
an imposing mansion near the northern bound- 
ary of the town that to-day does duty as an art 
museum. His sister-in-law, a young woman 
lately from the East, hastened to welcome him. 

" I met Lincoln awhile ago," Ninian Edwards 
began at once, " and he told me that he and Mary 
were to be married to-night at the parsonage. I 
told him that this would n't do, that if Mary was 
to be married, it must be from my house." 

The sister-in-law was silent, lost in astonish- 
ment. She had supposed that the engagement 
of Lincoln and Mary Todd had been perma- 
nently broken. She had been long enough in the 
West, however, to know that a hasty wedding 
meant much labor for the family in a town where 
the local confectioner's stock consisted of noth- 
ing more festive than gingerbread and beer. She 
hastened to Mrs. Ninian Edwards's, and, with 

58 




THE BENJAMIN EDWARDS HOUSE 



Houses Lincoln Knew 

the help of other friends and neighbors, a boun- 
teous old-time supper was prepared. 

When the guests arrived that evening, Mrs. 
Edwards was ready for them. Hams and cakes 
were arrayed on the sideboard in the fashion 
of the day. Mary Todd had borrowed a wed- 
ding dress of a sister and stood, with three brides- 
maids, white and shining in conventional silk. 
The bridegroom, the lank <« plebeian" who had 
won Mary Todd's heart, entered soon after with 
Mr. and Mrs. Butler, those friends who had 
shared their home with him since his early 
Springfield days. Only a short hour since, Mrs. 
Butler, resplendent in a green satin gown, had 
stood on tiptoe to tie the bridegroom's necktie, 
determined, perhaps, in her motherly care of 
him, that for once his appearance should defy 
criticism. The Butler children hung about him 
to the last. When the door closed upon him, 
they knew that he would not return to their roof 
again; the morning would not find him reading 

59 



Lincoln in Illinois 

the works of William Wirt before the Franklin 
stove. 

And so Lincoln, in his carefully tied cravat, 
stood by his bride between the folding doors of 
the wide double parlors, and made the solemn 
vows. "Love is eternal" was engraved on the 
ring he slipped on her plump little hand. 

This was the greatest night the old house was 
ever to know, though the guests who fluttered 
about the bride were so all-unconscious of its 
importance. To them it meant only that Mary 
Todd had chosen to ally herself with a young 
lawyer with scarcely a penny to his name, his 
scanty income helped out by the per diem of a 
State legislator. They asked one another in whis- 
pers why Douglas had not been her choice. 

In the long years between this day and Lin- 
coln's departure for Washington to be inaugu- 
rated President, he and his wife were many 
times to seek again this door; for Mrs. Edwards's 
hospitality flowed on through the years, her spa- 
60 



Houses Lincoln Knew 

cious rooms being ever thrown wide to welcome 
friends and honor renown. 

It must have been some time after Lincoln's 
nomination for the Presidency that, at one of 
Mrs. Edwards's balls, a fiery Southern girl, vis- 
iting in the town, railed at <'this Lincoln, who 
wants to put niggers on a level with white peo- 
ple." A laughing youth took her then and there 
to meet Lincoln, whom they came upon in a 
card-room, surrounded by his usual court. 

Lincoln met the girl with kindness, and lis- 
tened with patience, seeming to see reflected 
in her fury and misunderstanding the fury and 
misunderstanding of the South itself. He took 
the pains to explain his attitude on slavery quite 
clearly and plainly to her before she went back 
to her dancing. " I did not know Lincoln would 
be like that," was her contrite remark. 

And that memory the house has folded away 
with many others — a mere sketch in its great 
book of recollections that ends with those days 
6i 



Lincoln in Illinois 

when Mary Lincoln came back to these rooms 
that had known her girlhood, to live out her 
broken days, shattered by the loss of her hus- 
band and three of her children. 

She used to shut out the sun, choosing to live 
instead in the dim light of candles as if to say 
that their feeble flicker sufficed to light her on 
her way in these dark days of her life. Perhaps 
it was because to her darkened mind she found 
that, by shutting away a reality stern and grim, 
she could better lose herself in the visions of the 
past, when, gay, spirited, and happy, in white 
bobbinet and black velvet, she danced to the 
lively strains of the fiddles while the old house 
echoed her gay retorts. 



V. The Lincoln Home 



V.<v'?/i 




~-"<3*t.^ 



'^?<^^fe 



"V-*-^?^' 



THE GLOBE HOTEL 



i;i;#t- 



V 

THE LINCOLN HOME 

\JN the morning of his wedding day, Lin- 
coln himself had sought out the minister, the 
Reverend Charles Dresser, and asked him to 
perform the ceremony. The minister was eat- 
ing breakfast, in his modest one-story house at 
the corner of Eighth and Jackson Streets, when 
Lincoln arrived. Perhaps on this rainy Novem- 
ber morning the parsonage's interior looked 
particularly homelike and inviting. In any case, 
then or later the house made its impression on 
Lincoln, for we find him, some sixteen months 
after his marriage, puchasing it for his own, pay- 
ing from his hard-earned savings twelve hun- 
dred dollars spot cash and, in addition, convey- 
ing his sole piece of property — a lot in the 
business part of the town. Soon after he installed 

65 



Lincoln in Illinois 

in this new home his wife and his infant son, 
Robert Todd. 

The baby had been born in the boarding- 
house called the " Globe Hotel," where Lincoln 
had taken his bride. This was the best board- 
ing-house in town. One stayed there for the 
consideration of four dollars per week. But the 
days of boarding were now over. The father 
of a son desired a more permanent habitation. 
Thenceforth, for almost twenty years, the slim 
city directory contained the words: "A. Lin- 
coln, attorney at law, residence Eighth and 
Jackson." 

The Middle West, in its haste to realize its 
future, has been all too prodigal with its his- 
toric landmarks : but the house where the Lin- 
colns lived has been preserved by the State. The 
pilgrim finds it to be a frame house, harsh in 
outline, its proportions not improved by the 
second story the Lincolns added to meet the re- 
quirements of a growing family. It is perched 
66 




A CORNER OF LINCOLN'S SITTING-ROOM IN THE HOUSE AT 
EIGHTH AND JACKSON STREETS 



I 



The Lincoln Home 

so near the edge of its terraced lot that it looks 
as if it might be about to leap the low wooden 
fence that encloses the grounds. 

Here it was that the Lincolns lived during 
the greater part of their married life. Here were 
born to them three more children — all sons. 
Of these, the first had scarcely been laid in the 
mother's arms before Death had borne him out 
at the door. It was the first grief the new home 
had known. Mary Lincoln lay prostrate, turn- 
ing from the food that was urged upon her ; for 
hers, though a stormy heart, was deep and lov- 
ing. And Lincoln, so we learn through the rem- 
iniscences of a neighbor, bent over her plead- 
ing : «* Eat, Mary, for we must live." 

But this period of sorrow passed, to be suc- 
ceeded by happier times, as we learn through 
scrap books and letters. Two more boys were 
born, — «« Willie " and '< Tad," they were called. 
The noise of their play resounded through the 
rooms. Their games endangered the shells on 
67 



Lincoln in Illinois 

the " what-not." Out of the door they ran to 
meet a tall man ambling absently up the street 
with the plodding walk of one who follows the 
plough. With willing hands they helped him 
put up his muddy buggy and his horse, " Old 
Bob," when, after long weeks on the circuit, 
Lawyer Lincoln came home. They were not 
afraid to play freely with the old green cotton 
umbrella their father placed in the rack, nor 
were they deterred by the badge of ownership, 
'<A. Lincoln," in great muslin letters, sewed 
firmly on its under side. 

Perhaps because his public life necessitated 
so many absences from home ('since his mar- 
riage he had sat in Congress, campaigned for 
Clay, ridden the circuit, and run for United 
States Senator ") , Lincoln did not assume the role 
of patriarch, preferring to leave the children's 
discipline to their mother. When three-year-old 
Robert had run away, Lincoln had written to 
Speed : '< By the time I reached the house, his 
68 



The Lincoln Home 

mother had found him and had him whipped, 
and by now, very likely, he has run away 
again." 

According to old stories, the children were 
more severe with their father than their father 
was with them. One of the friends with whom 
Lincoln customarily played chess, used to re- 
late grimly of how tiny Tad had once swept the 
chessmen from the board, so ending the game, 
when his father failed to heed his summons to 
come to dinner. "And Lincoln never said a word. 
He took the child's hand and went home! " Thus 
the story used to end. 

Lincoln's neighbors used to recall him walk- 
ing about the streets, a boy on either side. Some- 
times they went for groceries — it was before 
"free delivery"; sometimes they went to the 
drug store where the men played chess and had 
soda water — without ice-cream, of course, — the 
ice-cream soda was unknown. Lincoln's partner, 
Herndon, used to complain that the boys spent 
69 



Lincoln in Illinois 

Sunday mornings in the office, spoiling pens and 
tossing about books and papers, with never a 
word of admonition from their father. 

It was on a Sunday after his nomination for 
the Presidency that Lincoln deserted his boys 
and went to church himself. When Tad missed 
his playfellow we do not know, but it was some 
time during the sermon when he strayed down 
the aisle, disheveled, ungartered.and very grimy, 
innocently seeking his best friend. Mrs. Lin- 
coln, elegant in ashes of roses, spread wide over 
hoops, a lace shawl drooping from her shoul- 
ders, her whitegloves crossed complacently on the 
widthsofrich silk, flushed until the color reached 
her new white bonnet ; but Lincoln himself, un- 
comfortable in his Sunday suit that would ride 
up around his neck when he sat down, stretched 
out a long arm and gathered Tad into its shelter 
while Mrs. Lincoln reflected that he never had 
and never would care for appearances. 

Perhaps this was due to the old easy life of 
70 



The Lincoln Home 

the flatboats and the circuit. Certain it is that he 
would open the front door to guests ; he would 
take certain liberties with conventions at the 
table, and once, yes, so they say, he took off 
his great shoes and warmed his stocking feet at 
the stove during court. On another occasion, 
some ladies who called at his house one hot 
summer evening found him lying full length in 
the front hall. Not at all abashed to be discov- 
ered thus, Lincoln ushered them in with " I'll 
trot the women folks out." 

This must have been before the days when 
Mrs. Lincoln had for a servant a litde Portu- 
guese girl, who, outliving them all, added her 
humble recollections to the store of reminis- 
cences of the family life. Of Mrs, Lincoln the 
old woman said, with a shake of her wizened 
litde head : " She taka no sassy talk, but if you 
good to her, she good to you. You gotta good 
friend." Of Lincoln she had more to say : " He 
so kind. When he come in he taka the chillins. 
71 



Lincoln in Illinois 

They no 'fraid of father. He so kind. He 
choppa the wood for fire, and little Robert 
choppa the little wood. When he passa me, he 
patta my shoulder. I worka for him." 

For Lincoln's dress she would apologize. 
«« He no style, no verra style. He wear just old 
plugga hat, and shirt on this-a-way." Her ges- 
ture indicated a garment awry. In a final efibrt 
to sum up her impression of Lincoln's character, 
she raised her eyes to the picture of the family 
group that hung on her cottage wall, and, in her 
scanty English, she said : «' Mr. Lincoln no verra 
style. He just common, like some one that is 
poor." 

Hundreds of travelers come yearly to visit 
Lincoln's home. In the guest-book presidential 
candidates have left their signatures; literary 
men their tributes. Between the acts of their 
plays, actors have stolen time to seek the house. 
But the great bulk of the pilgrims are plain and 
72 



The Lincoln Home 

humble folk. Old slaves have come to drop upon 
their knees in prayer. A youth who had beaten 
his way across the country on freight cars ap- 
peared one day, ragged and cold, to pay his 
poor respects ; for had not Lincoln known what 
it was to be ragged and to seek work from town 
to town? It would seem as if the spirit of Lin- 
coln still animated the house ; as if Democracy 
still opened the door; and that pilgrims rejoice, 
like the old woman who had been his servant, 
that he "had no verra style," that "he was just 
common, like some one that is poor." 




J-' 



LINCOLN'S PEW IN THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 



I 



VI. Old State House 




THE OLD STATE HOUSE 



VI 

OLD STATE HOUSE 

1 F the stark little frame house on Eighth and 
Jackson Streets reveals to us, at our knock, Lin- 
coln the private citizen, so, in equal measure, the 
old State House gives to us many a clear-cut pic- 
ture of Lincoln the public man. Within its stout 
walls of that pleasant-toned fossil limestone that 
was taken in ' 3 7 from a quarry on the outskirts 
of the town, we can see in fancy the gaunt face 
and tall figure of Lincoln in every shadow ; we 
can with no great difficulty imagine him stroll- 
ing through the legislative halls in the early for- 
ties with a contemplative pride in their splendor. 
For it was Lincoln and his colleagues, we will 
remember, who, through wire-pulling, maneu- 
vering, and personal influence, made Spring- 
field the capital of Illinois. 

11 



Lincoln in Illinois 

The old State House is the monument that 
marks the success of their efforts. From the very 
day of its completion to the day when Lincoln 
left Springfield forever, after his election to the 
Presidency, this building was linked in innu- 
merable associations with his name. Here we 
find him, as State legislator, as orator on many 
an occasion, as candidate for United States Sen- 
ator, and again as Republican nominee for that 
position six years afterwards. We discover him 
here in i 86 1 in an upper chamber put at his 
disposal by the Governor, where he could re- 
ceive the long line of office-seekers, well-wishers, 
and delegations who came to pay their respects 
to the President-elect. Last of all we behold him 
here, stretched in death on the palanquin they 
had fashioned for him in that Hall of Represent- 
atives that had so often echoed with the laughter 
provoked by his humor and the demonstrations 
of enthusiasm awakened by his courageous ut- 
terances of immortal truths. 
78 




THE ROOM IN THE OLD STATE HOUSE MOST IDENTIFIED 
WITH LINCOLN 



1 



I 



Old State House 

Since that day the old State House has known 
many changes. In 1867, some twenty years 
after its erection, it was sold to the county, the 
growing State demanding larger quarters. In 
1899 the county in turn had outgrown the 
building. With a respect none too common in 
the Middle West, the County Commissioners 
determined to enlarge but to preserve the his- 
toric landmark. Thereupon, with the best inten- 
tions if not the best architectural results, they 
constructed a new foundation to serve as ground 
floor, and onto its shoulders, with no slight 
skill, lifted bodily the old State House. And 
thus, even though the old Greek lines were lost, 
the State House with all its rich memories was 
saved. The interior is largely unchanged. The 
square rooms, with their long windows, used 
now for the county's courts, yield to the sym- 
pathetic imagination many a vanished scene. 

The year 1854 is rich in momentous occa- 
sions. Feeling was running high throughout 
79 



Lincoln in Illinois 

the country, for the Missouri Compromise, that 
law which had long limited slavery to a certain 
well-defined area, had been repealed. The Ne- 
braska Act, as the bill which had accomplished 
this was called, gave the inhabitants of the 
new territory the right to choose for themselves 
whether or not slavery should be permitted 
within its borders. 

The author of this dangerous bill we have 
met before. He is none other than Stephen A. 
Douglas, fellow legislator with Lincoln at Van- 
dalia, one of the young men who used to de- 
bate around Speed's open fire, rival with Lincoln 
for the favor of Mary Todd. Since those days 
his ascent in the world has been steady. He 
has been Secretary of State in Illinois, Judge of 
the Supreme Court in that State, and he is now 
in his second term in the United States Senate. 
How paltry Lincoln's few honors — his single 
term as Congressman and his four terms as State 
legislator — look beside these glories. It is in 
80 



Old State House 

his role of Senator that Douglas is in Spring- 
field defending his bill. 

Our curtain rises on the day immediately 
following the one on which he had made an 
eloquent address. On this very afternoon of 
October 5 the crowds assembled in Springfield 
for an annual State agricultural fair have been 
promised that Douglas's arguments will be an- 
swered by Judge Lyman Trumbull, an Anti- 
Nebraska Democrat of prominence. 

And now Fate intervenes for Abraham Lin- 
coln. Trumbull is prevented unexpectedly from 
coming to Springfield, and the committee be- 
think them of a certain Whig lawyer, prominent 
in the State Legislature, who had been dropping 
out of politics during the past six years. He 
consents to take Trumbull's place. 

The Hall of Representatives is the scene of 
Lincoln's entry into the great controversy. What 
a contrast he presents to the " Little Giant." 
Douglas, well-dressed, haughty, and imperious, 



Lincoln in Illinois 

sits on the clerk's platform as Lincoln, stoop- 
shouldered, long and lank, with a " quizzical, 
pleasant, raw-boned face," rises and bows to the 
crowd that packs the room to bursting. 

Lincoln begins by complimenting his dis- 
tinguished friend, reminding the audience that 
he had not had the wide experience of Judge 
Douglas in public life, and that, therefore, if he 
should misstate any fact, he would be very 
much obliged to the Judge if he would cor- 
rect him, a humility strangely reminiscent of a 
Roman speaker who had reminded the crowd, 
" I am no orator as Brutus is." Perhaps Lincoln 
and Jack Kelso had read that speech together. 

The " Little Giant" is gratified by this pro- 
per deference. He rises and announces with 
senatorial dignity that he will not interrupt the 
speaker until the close of his remarks. And 
then Lincoln launches into the masterly review 
of the legislation on slavery. How convincing 
his earnestness is 1 The beads of perspiration 
82 



Old State House 

drop from his brow as he throws his head this 
way and that like a projectile. "Not a grace- 
ful figure, yet not an ungraceful one." 

Douglas soon forgets his promise not to in- 
terrupt. He is constantly on his feet in defense 
of his bill. Surely the Whig lawyer can find no 
answer to his thundering assertion : " The ori- 
gin of the Nebraska Bill was this, sir, God cre- 
ated man and placed before him good and evil 
and left him to choose for himself That was 
the origin of the Nebraska Bill." 

Lincoln pauses, the «' picture of good nature 
and patience," a smile lurking in the corner of 
his mouth parts his lips. " I think, then," he 
says drolly, " that it is a great honor to Judge 
Douglas that he was the first man to discover 
the fact y 

And the long roar of appreciation of the 
crowd warns the irate judge that this Whig law- 
yer, whom he has so distanced in the world, is 
no mean antagonist. 

83 



Lincoln in Illinois 

Perhaps his success in holding his own so 
easily with the famous Douglas caused Lincoln 
to decide to run for the United States Senate 
himself. For the term of Douglas's colleague, 
General Shields, was about to expire and it was 
this vacancy that Lincoln determined to trv to 
fill. 

«' You used to express a great deal of partial- 
ity for me," he wrote one political friend. " Some 
friends here are really for me for the United 
States Senate, and I should be very grateful if 
you could make a mark for me among your 
friends." 

A month later he wrote to another politician, 
" I have really got it into my head to run for 
the United States Senate, and if I could have 
your support, my chances would be reasonably 
good." 

In February of the new year, i 8 5 5 , the battle 
is on. Democrats, Anti-Nebraska Democrats, 
and Whigs all have their candidates. Again the 
84 



old State House 

scene is the old State House. In joint session 
the Assembly meets in the Hall of Represent- 
atives to ballot for Senator. We shall do well 
if we can find a place in the gallery among 
the ladies in their full-flounced skirts, mantles, 
and pelisses, the fashionable ones in bonnets, 
set far back on the head, faced with roses and 
ribbons. 

That short, round-faced little woman is 
Mrs. Lincoln. The tall and stately beauty, sur- 
rounded by her handsome daughters, is Mrs. 
Mattison, the wife of the Democratic Governor. 
Rumor has it that Governor Mattison's name will 
be sprung as a candidate at a crucial moment. 
His views on the extension of slavery have been 
kept purposely vague. 

Down comes the Speaker's gavel. The mo- 
mentous call of the roll begins. Abraham Lin- 
coln is in the lead with his forty-five votes as 
against the Democrats' candidate. Shields, forty- 
one, and Lyman Trumbull's, the Anti-Nebras- 

85 



Lincoln in Illinois 

leans', paltry five. The Democrats would rather 
that Lincoln, the Whig, were elected than the 
stern-faced Trumbull from the bolting wing of 
their own party. 

Plainly Lincoln is the favorite. A lady in the 
gallery whispers to another that Lincoln's sister- 
in-law, Mrs. Edwards, is to give a reception on 
this very night to celebrate the victory. How 
Mary Lincoln will enjoy standing in Une. She 
will know how to look the part of a Senator's 
wife. 

And yet, as the hours drag by, Lincoln's vic- 
tory becomes less sure. He does not add to those 
forty-five votes. Steadily they slip away from 
him. Trumbull's five have swelled to five times 
the number. And now the Democrats withdraw 
Shields and bring forward Governor Mattison 
for the final rush. 

The light of the February afternoon has 
waned. The gas has been lighted in the great 
central chandelier. The galleries are now packed 
86 



Old State House 

to sufFocation. In another moment Mattison will 
be elected. How the eyes of his handsome fam- 
ily sparkle ! 

Fifteen Whigs stick stoically to Lincoln. 
Among them we mark the quaint figure of 
Judge Logan, for a short time Lincoln's senior 
partner in the practice of the law. H e has sharply 
chiseled features, deep-set eyes, and a firm slit 
of a mouth. His mouth is firmer still when Lin- 
coln bends over him and urges the Whigs to 
swing their vote to Trumbull. Logan gives up 
hope with an effort. He will obey, but not with- 
out protest. 

" Better Trumbull than Mattison," Lincoln 
urges, and the Whigs, who have withdrawn for 
conference, file back into their seats. On the 
next ballot they cast their full strength for the 
man who began the day with five votes. It is all 
over. The Democrats have been ignominiously 
defeated. " Hurrah for Trumbull ! " shout the 
crowds as they pour out into the bleak rawness 
87 



Lincoln in Illinois 

of the February night, the Democrats looking 
more woe-begone than the Whigs. 

An hour later the society folk are tripping in 
at Ninian Edwards's door, the ladies in tulle and 
silk festooned with garlands of flowers, many 
of them with headdresses of lace. By the side 
of the host and hostess the Trumbulls stand, re- 
ceiving the good wishes and congratulations of 
their friends. Then Lincoln enters the room, his 
wife at his side. Plainly he is very tired, but he 
reaches out his great hand in a warm, generous 
clasp. " Not too disappointed to congratulate 
my friend Trumbull," he says. 

Years have passed. The Whigs have vanished. 
The Republican Party has been born. For Sen- 
ator it has just nominated Abraham Lincoln as 
the " first and only choice of the Republicans 
of Illinois for United States Senator as the succes- 
sor of Stephen A. Douglas." Thereupon they 
adjourn until evening. 

88 



Old State House 

It is the Senate Chamber that can boast of be- 
ing the background for this occasion. For there 
it was, at eight o'clock, that Lincoln arose and 
began that memorable address which his friends 
had warned him would lose him the Senatorship ; 
which Time has proved eventually elected him 
to the Presidency. 

Let us summon from the past his tall figure 
as he mounts the platform ; let us listen for the 
first notes of that effective falsetto in which he 
habitually opened a speech. The words come 
slowly as if the speaker sent them rolling down 
the ages : — 

«« Mr. President, and Gentlemen of the Con- 
vention ; If we could first know where we are and 
whither we are tending, we could better judge 
what to do and how to do it." 

And then: "A house divided against itself 
cannot stand. I believe that this Government can- 
not endure half slave and half free. I do not ex- 
pect the United States to be dissolved. I do not 
89 



Lincoln in Illinois 

expect the house to fall ; but I do expect it will 
cease to be divided " ; and so on to the end. 

A jewel box of memories is this old State 
House, over which we might linger indefinitely ; 
and chief among its treasures is the recollection 
of that glorious day when a strong man arose, and 
in defiance of advice, uttered the immortal words 
that presaged the end of slavery. 



VII. Last Days at Home 







:mic.. 



tt^J^^I 



^.v^^ 



-.^^ 



'lA^-J' 



THE STATION WHERE LINCOLN DELIVERED HIS 
FAREWELL ADDRESS TO SPRINGFIELD 



VII 

LAST DAYS AT HOME 

IHE walls of the State House which in June 
had echoed Lincoln's great speech, " A House 
Divided Against Itself," resounded all too soon 
the huzzas of the Democratic legislators who, 
seven months later, returned Douglas to the 
United States Senate. The preceding summer 
had been filled for both Illinois's great contest- 
ants, during their seven joint debates, with the 
adulation of crowds, the crash of country bands 
and the flare of bonfires. For Douglas these 
demonstrations culminated in a triumph that 
swept him back to Washington; for Lincoln, 
they ended in a defeat that returned him to his 
law practice with an empty wallet. 

That the long night of political death had set 
in he may well have felt, when every printing- 

93 



Lincoln in Illinois 

house in Springfield refused to publish the 
speeches he had so lately delivered in this mo- 
mentous campaign, with the cold defense, 
" There would be no demand for such a book." 
In those days Springfield seemed still a long 
way from the Eastern States, so that it was nat- 
ural, perhaps, that the local printers should not 
know how widely Lincoln's fame had traveled, 
how sure it was to grow. In the two swift years 
that followed they were to learn the extent of 
his growing reputation, for, as we know, a bare 
year and five months had gone by after Doug- 
las's election to the Senate, before the Repub- 
lican Convention in Chicago had nominated 
Lincoln to the Presidency. 

When the news that Lincoln had been nomi- 
nated was flashed over the wires to Springfield, 
the little city of less than ten thousand inhab- 
itants was shaken with excitement. Every one 
tried to be the first to tell his distinguished 
townsman the news. Many believed they were 
94 



A 




» Ni 



HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, STATE HOUSE, WHERE LINCOLN 
DELIVERED HIS " HOUSE-DIVIDED-AGAINST-ITSELF" SPEECH 



i 



Last Days at Home 

the first to gasp the words, «* Mr. Lincoln, you 
're nominated " ; which accounts for conflict- 
ing stories as to when and where and from 
whom Lincoln learned of his victory. Men who 
had been boys on that day long liked to relate 
the story of how Lincoln played at ball with 
them, when a messenger brought him a tele- 
gram that caused him to exclaim hurriedly, 
" Boys, I have to get out of this," and to disap- 
pear in the direction of the "Journal " office. 

That this telegram was not the decisive one 
seems certain ; for other witnesses take up the 
tale at this point and tell of the editor of the 
"Journal " rushing into the newspaper oflice, 
where he found Lincoln and about twenty other 
men waiting for news, with still another mes- 
sage. The editor was a man of slight physique, 
and what with his excitement and his running, 
a mere ghost of a voice issued from his stiff, 
white lips when he attempted to wave the tele- 
gram over his head and shout the news. A 

95 



Lincoln in Illinois 

young lawyer named Zane was obliged to cry 
for him : «« Three cheers for our next President." 

And then Lincoln went home to his wife, 
stopping all the way to shake the hands of well- 
wishers, with his hearty "Well, we've got it." 

From this time on until the day of his elec- 
tion in the following November, Springfield 
was to thrill with the long-drawn-out excitement 
of being the home town of a presidential nom- 
inee ; and the still greater experience, between 
the day of his election and his departure for 
Washington, of being the home of a President- 
elect. 

At the mere mention of '61, how the pic- 
tures flash into life ! We see the silk-hatted del- 
egation arriving from Chicago to make formal 
announcement of the nomination, tramping up 
the steps of Lincoln's modest home, filing into 
the drawing-room as the small Portuguese serv- 
ant swung wide the door for their entrance. 
There, unawed by the " what-not " and the gold- 
96 



Last Days at Home 

bound books on the center table, they await Lin- 
coln's entrance. They look him over critically 
as he comes toward them. How awkwardly he 
moves ! The caricatures, then, have not exag- 
gerated his grotesque appearance. But wait! 
He begins to speak, and his face lights up with 
inner fire. The choice of the party is not so 
hard to understand. 

And what a glorious day was that of August 
8 of this same momentous year, when Lincoln's 
candidacy was celebrated by two monstrous 
processions. From all over the State the farm- 
ers poured into the town, each delegation striv- 
ing to outdo the others with its emblems. Let 
us imagine ourselves somewhere on Eighth 
Street, near the Lincoln home, pushing to the 
edge of the sidewalk to watch the delegations 
go by. The fog of the early morning has rolled 
away. The day is warm and pleasant. A group 
of young men have brought a cannon to fire 
in honor of Lincoln. They have gone to his 
97 



Lincoln in Illinois 

house and asked him to give it a name. " Mary 
Lincoln," he gallantly christens it, and " Mary 
Lincoln" it is, lifting up its voice, as she has 
ever done, to praise her husband. 

The bands are crashing out their campaign 
tunes. Rivers of men are pouring down the 
street in an unbroken stream. See this great 
ball a group of enthusiasts are rolling through 
the dust, with the words " The Republican Ball 
Is In Motion " painted upon it. So it is; and 
'« Honest Abe," or « Mr. Lincoln," as his towns- 
men always call him, has given it momentum. 
Here is a banner emblazoned with 

"The people mourn insulted laws 
And curse Steve Douglas as the cause." 

We're not so sure about that. Many an on- 
looker on that day means to cast a vote for the 
" Little Giant." Here is another attempt to voice 
assurance : — 

"Westward the course of empire takes its way, 
We link-on to Lincoln, our fathers were for Clay." 

98 



hast Days at Home 

The woolen mill's float carries a power loom 
which is actually weaving j eans cloth. Before 
the procession is over several yards have been 
woven, and straightway are cut and made up 
before the eyes of the crowd into a pair of 
pantaloons to be given to Lincoln, to remind 
him, likely as not, of the day when jeans were 
good enough to wear in the early Assembly of 
Illinois. 

Here comes a club proud to celebrate Lin- 
coln's humble origin. Its float represents a flat- 
boat. Another float, just coming around the 
corner, shows us the rail-splitter at work. What 
faith it gives many a lad in the Republic to real- 
ize that America's ladder can be scaled from the 
bottom rung to the very top ! 

For those of the spectators who stand near 
the Lincoln house there is a fine moment when 
Richard Yates, the candidate for Governor on 
the ticket with Lincoln, leaves the procession to 
shake Lincoln's hand as he stands on the stoop 

99 



Lincoln in Illinois 

reviewing the parade. When they call on him 
for a speech, he depicts for them his first meet- 
ing with Lincoln in the early New Salem days, 
told of finding the young storekeeper and farm 
laborer at the house of Boiling Green. The 
marchers were largely farmers, as the men must 
ever be in the great grain State of Illinois. They 
knew what it had cost to wrest success from 
narrow circumstances. And when Yates, with 
dramatic effect, concluded : «* I shook hands 
that day with the future President of the United 
States, and he — shook hands with the future 
Governor of Illinois," they roared applause. 

When the Republican victory was assured, 
the following November, the town of Spring- 
field made a last effort to show its joy. Lanterns 
were hung out from every house, candles flick- 
ered in the windows studding the small panes 
with light, the old State House shone with tapers 
from basement to dome. Night was night in 
those times. No winking, crawling electric signs 

lOO 



Last Days at Home 

broke the darkness. No arc lights sent their cir- 
cular glare from street corners. Street lamps 
were lighted in the dark of the moon, but at all 
other times the shadows were thick under the 
maples that bordered the wide Western streets. 
A thousand candles pricking the night with their 
yellow points gave, therefore, a gala effect now 
hard to realize. 

A few nights later the Lincoln homestead 
opened its doors to townsfolk and legislators. 
Hundreds of men and women streamed in at the 
door to shake Lincoln's hand. Many had known 
him as a struggling lawyer ; still others as store- 
keeper and surveyor ; some even as pilot in those 
old days of obscurity already so hard to credit. 
Not all who shook his hand on that night had 
been his well-wishers during the heat of the cam- 
paign ; but once the issue was over, pride in a 
townsman took the place of rancor and Demo- 
crats vied with Republicans in crushing in at the 
door. Among them was a young girl who a few 

lOI 



Lincoln in Illinois 

days before had penned in her journal, now 
yellow with age, these words : — 

" Wednesday morning we heard of Mr. Lin- 
coln's election. We are disappointed, for we had 
hoped that such a man as he, without the least 
knowledge of state affairs, without any polish 
of manner, would not be sent to be the repre- 
sentative of this great nation. I tremble for our 
country. I hope foreigners will not judge us by 
our head." 

On the day after the «« levee " the same girl 
wrote : — 

«' We dressed for the reception. We found 
the house crowded, but did not know any of 
the persons, as all of our friends had been there 
earlier. I had some conversation with Mrs. Lin- 
coln. She was dressed in a pearl-colored moire 
antique and point lace. Mr. Lincoln looked 
handsome to me. His whiskers are a great im- 
provement, and he had such a pleasant smile I 
could not but admire him." 

I02 



Last Days at Home 

It is good to remember Lincoln thus in the 
hour of victory, clasping one by one the hands 
of his townsmen with that '« pleasant smile " that 
dissolved prejudice; good to remember Mary 
Lincoln in her " moire antique," with a «' deli- 
cate vine arranged with much taste in her hair." 
With one of the newspaper correspondents, let 
us pronounce her truly '«a lady of fine figure 
and accomplished address." 

There was, of course, a procession to cele- 
brate the election, with the usual oilcloth capes 
and flaring torches. A fine pen picture of Lin- 
coln is preserved for us in the files of the " Il- 
linois Journal," the newspaper that had sup- 
ported him so loyally and so long, showing him 
stepping out before his residence and saying, in 
response to the crowd's call for a speech : — 

" Friends and fellow citizens : — Please ex- 
cuse me on this occasion from making a speech. 
In all our rejoicing let us neither express nor 
cherish any harsh feeling towards any citizen 
103 



Lincoln in Illinois 

who by his vote has difFered from us. Let us at 
all times remember that all American citizens 
are brothers of a common country and should 
dwell together in the bonds of fraternal feeling." 

At the same time Governor Yates was speak- 
ing down in the town at the "Wigwam," the 
rude building erected for the political meetings 
of the day. What fine, prophetic words his 
were! "I repeat," his words rang out, "that so 
firm is my belief in the integrity, in the purity 
of motives, in the patriotism of Mr. Lincoln, 
yea, I believe there is a providence in it fthe 
victory!, and that Mr. Lincoln is raised up for 
the crisis as Washington was raised up for the 
Revolution." 

And from all parts of the old Wigwam Lin- 
coln's townsmen cried : " So do I ! So do I ! " 

On February 1 1 , in the following year, 
Lincoln started for Washington. The rain was 
falling on the streets he had known so long. 

104 



I^ast Days at Home 

Through the mist he could see the State House 
which his early efforts had brought to Spring- 
field, the drug store where he and his friends 
had played their chess and cards together, the 
court-house where he had tried his cases. 

At the station he found a crowd of friends 
who reached out eager hands for a last greeting 
as he and his suite passed through their midst 
to the waiting train. He had not planned to 
address again those who had so often heard 
his voice, but the demand was so insistent that 
he came at last to the rear platform, and, look- 
ing down into their faces, through the rain 
which was now falling fast, spoke " slowly, im- 
pressively, and with profound emotion," these 
words : — 

«'My Friends: — No one not in my situa- 
tion can appreciate my feeling of sadness at this 
parting. To this place and the kindness of these 
people, I owe everything. Here I have lived 
a quarter of a century, and have passed from a 

105 



Lincoln in Illinois 

young to an old man. Here my children have 
been born, and one is buried. I now leave, not 
knowing when or whether ever I may return, 
with a task before me greater than that which 
rested upon Washington. Without the assist- 
ance of that Divine Being who ever attended him, 
I cannot succeed. With that assistance, I can- 
not fail. Trusting in Him, who can go with me 
and remain with you and be everywhere for 
good, let us confidently hope that all will yet be 
well. To his care commending you, as I hope 
in your prayers you will commend me, I bid 
you an affectionate farewell." 

" We have known Mr. Lincoln many years," 
Simeon Francis's newspaper said next day, «' we 
have heard him speak on a hundred different 
occasions, but we never saw him so profoundly 
affected nor did he ever utter an address which 
seemed to us so full of simple and touching elo- 
quence, so exactly adapted to the occasion, so 
worthy of the man and of the hour. ... At pre- 
io6 



Last Days at Home 

cisely eight o'clock, city's time, the train moved 
off bearing our honored townsman, our noble 
chief, Abraham Lincoln, to the scenes of his 
future labors and, as we firmly believe, of his 
glorious triumph. God bless honest Abraham 
Lincoln!" 

A portion of the railroad station of that day 
still stands, doing duty for a freight depot. 
Here the Daughters of the American Revolu- 
tion have placed a tablet recording Lincoln's 
farewell to his townsmen — the last words from 
his lips Springfield was ever to hear. Let us re- 
member them with gratitude and, as we picture 
him standing on the platform of the car, the rain 
falling with the tears of those who had known 
him longest and best, let us say with the files 
of the old newspaper : « God bless honest 
Abraham Lincoln." 



I 



VIII. 'The Funeral 






■«^ '/;■:• 



---C'^ 




:fi 







THE GRAVE OF ANN RUTLEDGE, PETERSBURG 



VIII 

THE FUNERAL 

Illinois can lay no claim to the next four 
years of Lincoln's life, when he guided the Na- 
tion through waters as shallow and past snags as 
great as those of the Sangamon up which he had 
once piloted the Talisman. The days of the Civil 
War are the Nation's. They belong by right to all 
the people. They are written in characters im- 
perishable, for the world. To Illinois, — above all 
to Springfield, so rich in intimate associations, — 
Time vouchsafed j ust one more page to the book, 
of memories. The day of Lincoln's burial was 
hers. 

It is May, '65. The season is well advanced ; 

the heat already equals that of midsummer. On 

every train, in buggies, on horseback, the crowds 

are pouring in to Lincoln's home town. The 

III 



Lincoln in Illinois 

hotels are full. There is not an extra room to be 
had in the city. The last cot is occupied. The 
churches, the public halls, throw open their 
doors. Even so, the streets are filled with people 
who can find no place to lay their heads all the 
long night through. A little city often thousand 
cannot hope to shelter these many delegations 
from the army, from the navy, from the bench, 
and from the various States, to say nothing of the 
great hordes from the farms, who have come to 
Lincoln's burial. 

The shock of the assassination had left the 
nerves ofthe people raw and quivering, especially 
here in Lincoln's home town, where so many 
had known him as friend, neighbor, townsman. 
" Lincoln 's dead and I 'm glad of it," cried a 
young clerk of Southern sympathies, in fierce 
allegiance to defeated issues. He escaped only 
with his life. The Mayor, on horseback, was 
obliged to ride straight into the crowd to his res- 
cue. A French workman in Alton, the Illinois 

112 



The Funeral 

town where Lincoln and Douglas had held the 
last of their debates, did not fare so well. When 
he, too, expressed exultation, his fellow-work- 
men struck him to the earth with an iron bar, 
and he was borne away on a litter. 

A boy named Edmund Beal, who witnessed 
their rage, was among the many who poured into 
Springfield for the funeral. An Alton carpenter 
who was to assist in decorating the capitol and 
the tomb had asked the boy to go with him and 
help in the work. And so it came about that the 
boy played an important though humble part in 
making ready for Lincoln's terrible home-com- 
ing. He helped swathe the State House in long 
sable " droops " ; he helped to construct the dais 
where the body was to rest in state ; he worked 
two long days and one night without stopping, 
building the seats for the great choir of three 
hundred who were to sing at the cemetery. Be- 
cause he was young and lithe, he was given the 
task of crawling out on the roof of Lincoln's 

113 



Lincoln in Illinois 

house to shroud that, too, in black. The wo- 
man who rented the house told him that his 
"droops " were not well spaced, and in order to 
help him she went to a storeroom where Lin- 
coln's desk still stood, and got him Lincoln's 
two-foot rule for a guide. «< You may keep it," 
she said, when the task was done ; and that rule 
the boy treasured for years. 

These preparations were all made under pres- 
sure, for there had been great uncertainty where 
Lincoln was to rest. His wife at last decided that 
he should lie in no special plot of ground set 
aside for his glory, but in the town's graveyard, 
with his friends. When at last all was ready, the 
boy with the ruler was as tired from all his work 
as Lincoln, at his age, often and often must have 
been from toil. Many others were equally weary, 
but at last the town was ready. 

How somber it looked ! Never in all the times 
Lincoln had pictured it while he was in Washing- 
ton could he have dreamed of it thus ; of these 
114 



The Funeral 

stores where he had bought his meat, his bread, 
his drugs, looking now so strangely unfamiliar 
in their weeds. Some of them displayed cards 
among the sable drapery, bearing his beautiful 
words : ** With malice towards none; with char- 
ity to all." One merchant expressed the heart of 
all the town in his " Ours in life ; the Nation's in 
death." 

Yes, theirs he had been, indeed. Scarcely a 
man in all the countryside who did not have some 
personal memory of Lincoln. Trivial yet perti- 
nent things they were that they told to each other 
when, the great funeral train at last having pulled 
in, the poor corpse lay on its dais in the Hall of 
Representatives, while the crowds, six abreast, 
poured into the hall through all one day and 
night. 

'« I passed him one day in that vacant lot near 
where the Wigwam stood," one man said. «' It had 
rained, then grown warm again, and as we passed, 
some corn, that grew there, crackled the way 

115 



Lincoln in Illinois 

corn does in the heat. He did not bow to me, 
but he said, with a kind of funny smile, 'The 
rain makes the corn laugh ' ; and now, whenever 
I hear corn crackle like that, I '11 think of him. 
'The rain makes the com laugh,' he said; and 
that 's the last word I '11 ever hear him say." 

So they talked while the hours passed. 

He lay in state a day and a night in the room 
where he had said, "A house divided against 
itself cannot stand." 

" Peace, Troubled Soul," the choir sang, as 
he was borne out of the door. 

How hot it was that May day. Many and 
many a time he had worked hard in the fields 
under just such a sky ; many a time he had cam- 
paigned in that same pitiless heat. On days as 
hot he had ridden the circuit, as " Bob," his old 
family horse, could testify ; " Bob," who was 
now being led in the funeral train, covered with 
a mantle, escorted by grooms ! 

The band strikes into the " Dead March," the 
ii6 



The Funeral 

plumes on the hearse, the flags and the banners, 
move in the faint breeze. The crowds push and 
stare as the great procession winds down the 
streets. General Hooker heads the military es- 
cort, his face as red as an Indian's. Among the 
pallbearers we see Judge Logan, once Lincoln's 
law partner, always his loyal friend, the man 
who had hated to change his vote from Lincoln 
to Trumbull for Senator long years before. 

Among the relatives sits Judge Davis, the 
man who sat as circuit judge in the days when 
Lincoln followed the court. No man knew Lin- 
coln better than he. 

The delegations of the States are passing. 
The crowds point out Oglesby, twice governor 
of Illinois. It was Oglesby who had had the in- 
spiration to bring those rails into the Chicago 
Convention, with "The rail-splitter candidate 
for President" — a slogan that in i860 did 
much to elect Lincoln. 

The strains of the music have grown faint. 

117 



Lincoln in Illinois 

The procession nears the cemetery. There is a 
choir there, too, and there are speeches and 
prayers and a sermon by the great Methodist 
bishop, Simpson, of Philadelphia, the man who 
had stirred the crowds during the war by his 
wonderful lecture, "Our Country." 

At last they can do no more — choirs, bands, 
nor speech-makers. The crowds surge home, 
clamber into special trains, climb into their 
wagons and drive homeward over the prairie 
roads. As the sun sinks, thirty-six guns are fired. 
Such was Lincoln's home-coming in '65. 

They built a great monument over his last rest- 
ing-place. Four groups of statuary , bristling with 
guns and bayonets, start from the four corners 
of the shaft. Above them stands the figure of 
Lincoln, erect and strong, — the statesman of a 
troubled day. Thus the sculptor, thus the public, 
of the early seventies saw Lincoln. And that it 
was Lincoln, and Lincoln at his height, we shall 
118 



i 



A^ 




THE LINCOLN MONUMENT IN SPRINGFIELD 



The Funeral 

not deny. But there are other Lincolns, not to 
be forgotten, — enshrined forever in the heart 
of Illinois. The men who knew him best, and 
the children of those men, see the young river- 
man at the wheel, bringing the steamboat up 
the stream that never again proved navigable; 
recall the young lawyer «' taking the chair " at 
many a public meeting as if by natural right ; re- 
member with affection a homely figure in linen 
duster, a boy trotting on either side ; picture the 
orator rising on rude platforms in prairie towns, 
raising his voice in shrill falsetto over vast crowds 
to denounce the spread of slavery. And these 
Lincolns, that presaged the final man, sleep too 
under these stones. 



THE END 



CAMBRIDGE ■ MASSACHUSETTS 



,p 1 a i*«e 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




0011 933 161 4^ 



